Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
by drumblonde
Summary: "Every day, I wake up, expecting to feel the soft warmth of Blaine pressing up against me under the covers." Semi AU futurefic. How does Kurt move on when tragedy strikes? One-shot. R&R pretty please? Warning: Character Death.


**You may possibly cry, but I wanted to try my hand at a tragic Klaine.**

**Let me know if you like it, I tried a new style of writing for this and I hope it works out!**

**It's only M because of a little language, just being safe here.**

* * *

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I never knew the meaning of that until the first instance, where I lost my mom so long ago to an untimely death. I hadn't expected something like that to break what little family I had apart, but somehow, inevitably, it did.

My father blames himself for what happened, and I wish that I could have said something to console him, to tell him hey, it wasn't your fault, she's in a better place now, don't fret over it, because honestly, I couldn't assure him that. The truth is, I was too to understand, too young to say those things because I didn't believe them myself. I had no idea the exact circumstances of her death—the details I was given at the time were ambiguous, even now—so I couldn't be obliged to tell him those things.

What would I give to turn back time and be able to say those things to him, because that's all I need to hear now. Then, I was too young to fully understand the heartache of death.

* * *

Every day, I wake up, expecting to feel the soft warmth of Blaine pressing up against me under the covers. Instead, when I roll over, I find no obstacle and my face crumples into the pillow beside me and I inhale deeply, searching for the faint trace of his scent that still lingers within the closely knitted fibers of the pillow.

I breathe deeply, clinging to the hope that his still-familiar scent would take me back to another time. This time, the memories flood back to the warm summer day when I felt as if my life had been perfect.

Blaine and I walk in the park, holding hands, and I spot the great tree sitting atop a large knoll. Blaine looks at me, and the wordless communication that passes between us is almost instantaneous, and before I know it, we're both racing, sprinting up the hill to reach the tree before the other does.

Somehow I get there first, and I stop short when I see that on the other side of the tree was an enormous blanket with a dark wicker basket sitting next to it. All of a sudden, I feel a force plow into me that knocks me on the soft blanket, and I feel Blaine's warm breath tickle as he laughs in my ear. The next moment, he tickling me all over, and we're rolling around on the blanket in a struggle for power, as I yell out, stop, in my fit of laughter. He has this silly grin on his face, and he keeps tickling me for a few more minutes until he could tell that I am on the verge of getting angry with him.

He stops and wraps his arms around me, and we lay back against the tree, basking in the glow of the golden moment. Blaine suddenly sits up, and reaches over to the basket and begins pulling out various food items from inside. I laugh when I see what he made, but I still take one of the sandwiches graciously. They're my favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, made with only creamy peanut butter and cherry jelly. He takes out some other little snacks from the basket, like a bag of pretzels and a container of vegetables and another of fresh fruit. I smile when I see the two bottles of lemonade he pulls out next. He tells me that he knows that he isn't the greatest cook, but he knew that those were my favorite foods, and how he knows that I like to eat healthy, and he kept rambling on until I shut him up with a kiss.

When I pull away, I tell him that I don't care how good of a cook he is, I only care that he is there with me, and I would love everything he does. He blushes and smiles goofily and then we focus our attention on eating our sandwiches in a comfortable silence.

After we finish, we lay there in each other's arms for a while longer, and I am about to drift asleep when I feel Blaine fiddling with my hand, and then there's the cool touch of metal on my finger. He takes my hand and looks me in my eyes, and tells me how lucky he is to know me and how he wants to spend the rest of his life with me and if I'll have him, he'd be glad to call me his husband, and he's showing me a matching ring on his own finger. But I'm too busy trying not to cry, and trying to hide from him the fact that I'm trying not to cry, but damn it, there's those tears that always find me in the worst situations and he's wiping them from my face and asking me if that was a yes, and I'm nodding my head and squeaking out yes over and over again so that I know he hears me and understands me.

I am snapped out of my reverie by the shrill sound of the phone ringing from across the room. I sigh and get up to answer it. It's my father.

"Hi, Kurt," he says slowly. "I just wanted to see how you were today. I—I know how long it takes for things to get back to normal. I just want you to know that I'm always here for you."

I couldn't answer him, because my throat was too constricted with a sob. My nose was already running and I just sniffed in response. "I love you, son. Just…call me if you need me," he said, and he hung up. I could tell that he had gotten off the phone so quickly because he was on the verge of breaking down as well. I get those calls daily, and every day, it's the same pain relived over again.

* * *

Eating breakfast is lonely without my best friend. It's the same cereal, the same cup of coffee, the same newspaper staring back up at me while I pretend to read it and pretend like everything is okay. I'm supposed to go to an audition today, but there's a lot on my to-do list, and I frankly couldn't care less if I made it to the audition or not.

I go back into the bedroom after showering—that shower seems so big now—and go to the closet to find something to wear. I'm getting frustrated because I cannot find anything that I feel like wearing, nothing seems suitable for the things I feel. There's a loose thread on one of my sweaters, and I tug at it, wishing I could let everything go just like that piece of thread. I want to unravel myself and untangle these thoughts that have been eating up at me. Once, just once, I want to let myself, but I get too afraid to and I go on with the way I've been going.

I push around the clothes hanging on the rack, and then I see stripes of red and navy blue hidden near the back of the closet. I reach for it and hold it in my hands, rubbing at the silkiness with my fingertips, recalling those days of dressing up in a uniform and going to that school back in Ohio. I look at the tag, and I realize that it's not mine, but Blaine's and I figure that he must have stuck it in here after I threw out most of our stuff from high school.

Back then, I thought it was a frivolous thing to keeps mementos from high school—those years possessed some of the worst memories of my life—but now I can't help tying it around my neck like I used to so long ago. Another flashback descends upon me, and this time, I'm back at regionals.

We're backstage, right about to go on and perform our set, but I see the way that my old friends are performing and I'm so nervous, nervous to the point where I think I might die, because they were performing _original songs_ and all I'm thinking is _how am I supposed to go up against them_ when it's only my first duet in front of people, in front of judges, and I start to worry that nobody is going to like our performance for it being so different than what they're used to. I panic and try to run to the bathroom, because _I think I'm going to be sick_ but I feel a strong grip pulling me back to the side of the stage. Blaine doesn't say a word, but he just squeezes my shoulders, and strangely enough, that calms me down enough so that my legs start to work and we're walking to our places.

The Warblers start off, and I find myself singing the song, and I start to lose my inhibitions. I'm finding my confidence, and I'm actually having fun with the performance. We get to our last number and it turns into another scene like the time we sang that song in that warehouse for all those girls—minus the foam—and we're just having _fun_ and _living in the moment_. I never want it to end, and we're all still on our performance high when we run off to backstage. I don't get too far, because then Blaine is tugging at me again, but more insistently this time and he leads me over to a secluded corner.

He starts to say things, but then stops until he finally rambles on about the incredible feeling he's feeling right now and how he never thought that he could feel that way before and how he was sure that there was only one way to keep feeling that feeling again, and then next thing I know, he's kissing me, slow and rushed all at the same time. My initial shock wears off after a second, and I feel myself melting into him and he presses me up against the wall.

I'm kissing him back, and he starts to bite on my lower lip and _fuck that feels good_, and we go on as we both start to feel more comfortable and we're getting greedy, him threading his fingers in my hair and I'm tugging his tie to bring him closer and I re-evaluate my earlier sentiments. This is where I want to stay, in this glorious moment between just us two. When we finally pull back, he looks into my eyes with a distant look mirrored in his own. He asks me how that was for a kiss, and I tell him it was the most incredible first kiss that I had ever had, as cheesy as it sounds, because that really was my first kiss. With Brittany it was just something that meant nothing, and the one from Karofsky counted as assault, while this one was just, simply perfect.

He smiles at me, and we lean in again, but this time, we are interrupted by a mass of navy blue blazers with red piping tackling us in congratulations and happiness, for both the performance and what had just happened between Blaine and me.

Once again, the daydream is disrupted by a knocking on the door and I have to get up from the floor of my closet and go answer it. It's Rachel, with Sadie.

I let them in and put on a happy face when Sadie comes rushing up to me and peppering me with, "Daddy, it's so good to _see_ you today! Guess what I did today in preschool?" Her black curls bounce up and down along with her, and I ruffle her hair and respond to her questions, the way I've trained myself to do whenever I see her. I thank Rachel for taking her in the carpool and she leaves, reminding me of my turn next week.

* * *

I sit down with Sadie for lunch, and I ask her what she wants to eat. She responds with her ever-favorite peanut butter and cherry jelly sandwiches, and I get the ingredients out to make her sandwich. I see her looking at me while making her sandwich and I see a question on her face. "Sadie, what is it?" I ask.

She looks uncomfortably at me, but then answers with the innocence I used to treasure as a child, "Daddy, can you make my sandwich the way Daddy B makes them—I mean, made them?" She corrects herself, the tense foreign on her tongue still, as it is with all of us, but I smile at her again and begin preparing it the way Blaine did for her, with the crusts cut off, and extra jelly, and the sandwich cut in a heart shape.

She licks her lips in anticipation when I place it in front of her and she bites into it as soon as she gets a hold of it. When she finishes, she drinks the glass of milk also sitting in front of her, then suddenly says, "I miss Daddy B."

I pick her up and take her over to the couch and sit her down on my lap. "Yes, honey, I know you do. I do, too. But I want you to know that he's looking down at us and I can tell you that he's so, so proud of you, and I am too." There's tears in her eyes, and it's all I can do to keep my eyes from watering up, but I need to be strong for my daughter, so I just hug her close and rest my head on hers. Her dark curls wrap themselves in my face and I am again taken back to a different time.

There's black curls in my face, but they're Blaine's and I'm holding him because we had just gotten the news. The news that he only had four months left to live, that he had an advanced stage of cancer that was untreatable because it had spread too far. We're both sobbing freely in the small room at the hospital, and it's just us.

Blaine pulls away from the embrace to tell me how so fucking scared he is, and I tell him the same thing, because what are you supposed to tell the man you love when he just finds out that he has terminal cancer?

He becomes a ghost of his former self, eventually unable to do anything for himself, but through that whole time, I go back to the day we found out and his curls in my face because I ask myself again what I'm supposed to do because this wasn't supposed to happen, these things weren't supposed to happen to me anymore, not after what happened to me as a kid.

We decide to tell Sadie everything, since I don't want her to grow up with the same regrets I did, and she takes the news quietly. Later that night, after we told her, she comes up to Blaine and me as we watched TV on the couch with a box full of band-aids. She gives them to Blaine, saying, here Daddy B, I know how you can get better, these work for me all the time, but we have to break it to her that his sickness isn't like that, that Daddy B isn't going to get better.

Later, still, I tell her privately that we both need to do whatever we can to make Daddy B as comfortable as we can, especially when he's not feeling good, because that's all that we can do for him. I think she understands, because instead of bringing him band-aids, she places countless stuffed animals on the bed when he's too ill to get out of bed for the day. That always manages to cheer him up, and I see him clutching them tightly when she leaves, holding on to the memories of his daughter so that he may possibly take them with him, wherever he may go.

Sadie twitches on my lap, and I realize that she has fallen asleep, so I take her to her room and set he on her bed and put a blanket over her. I realize how much she actually looks like the both of us, with Blaine's wild and dark hair, and my light eyes, I am so thankful that we had the opportunity to have her the way we did. There's no possible way to ever repay my cousin, especially now.

* * *

Mrs. Handler knocks on the door softly, and I let her in, holding my finger to my lips so she understands that she needs to be quiet because Sadie is still asleep.

"Thank you so much for watching her, Mrs. Handler," I tell her. "I just remembered there's an errand I have to do before I go to my audition. I'm so glad you could be here earlier."

She brushes it off, and insists that she doesn't get to watch Sadie enough, and that she's glad to be our neighbor so she gets to watch her grow up. "You've have a special kid there, Kurt," she says, and I have to hurry up and leave the room to get where I'm headed, but I give her a look of deep thanks, because there's not much more I can say because it's so true.

The drive to the cemetery takes about fifteen minutes, and when I get there, the sun starts to peek out from the cover of the clouds. I get out of the car, and head straight for my destination without thinking about it, because I know it's location by heart already. I have no actual intention to go to my audition later that day, after the recent memories began to take hold of me.

I sit in front of the marble stone inlaid in the grass, and I stare at it for a while, and the grey colors begin to fade, and all I see is just white. White everything, wrapped around the form of Blaine, in his hospital bed, and the ticking beats of his heart begin to slow as I sit with him and watch him fade away from life.

He's barely breathing, but he pulls at my hand weakly and he wants me to come closer. I lean nearer to him and wrap both of my hands around his cold, clammy one, and he's speaking so softly I can hardly hear him at first but then I make out the words he's saying. He's telling me to listen to him, because he has something important to say and then he talks about Sadie and how much he loves her and how proud he is that she is our own and how he knows that she will be okay because she's such a smart, loving, and wonderful little girl and that he's so honored to have begun to raise her with me. Then he's telling me that I don't need to be afraid to move on, that it's okay to find happiness because that's all he wants for me. I'm shaking so hard because I know that he's almost gone, so I just nod and keep holding his hand, and he closes his eyes and tries to breathe deeply.

We stay like that for a while, but then his hand ever so softly goes slack in my hands and I know that he's gone, gone for good, and then the floodgates open and I'm a wreck, sitting on the edge of his bed, clasping his lifeless hand in my own and pressing it to my forehead. The nurses comes in soon, and they let me stay there for a while, until they tell me that I need to leave so they can do what they need to do with him. It hits me that _Blaine is dead, oh god Blaine is __**dead**__._

After six months of dreading this day, it finally happened. He outlived the doctor's predictions, but only by a couple of months. I think he held on longer just to make sure everything was going to be okay with me and Sadie, and I'm filled with a vast respect for him to be able to go through his illness and still try to make the best out of things.

I look at his headstone now, and I read the words on it once again.

"Son. Friend. Father."

_The most faithful of all three I have ever met_.

"There you are. I've been looking for you forever."

_You did find, me Blaine. And I found you._

And the final, "Love isn't silly at all."

_Not at all._

Gazing at those words written in stone, I remember his words once again from so long ago. Back to the day when we buried Pavarotti under the leafless tree in the middle of March. He told me after we lost regionals to New Directions that we did win after all, because what we got was each other from it. I remember hearing that, and resolving myself to stick it through with him, because that was the only thing that mattered, is that we had each other.

I don't have him anymore, only the memories, and I'm realizing that yes, it will take a long time, but someday, I will be able to go on and live life again the way Blaine would have wanted me to.

So that's why I somehow tear myself away from my spot on his grave and I go back to my car. There's an audition I need to get to, and I realize how much I actually do want it. It would be silly to pass up this amazing opportunity that Blaine set up for me, and I drive there with a purpose, somehow getting there on time.

I think some more on the way over there, and I realize just how much my heart still aches over Blaine, and it's only intensified by his death. But this audition is giving me a new resolve, and I tell myself that it's okay to let my feelings show, because I've been silly to repress everything, because Blaine had it right when he sang with me "Love isn't silly at all."


End file.
